20 Random Facts About Gwendolyn “Gwen” Howe
by SWaddict1986
Summary: Part of thanfiction's DAYDverse: Every character has a story to tell, even those only mentioned once.


**Title**: 20 Random Facts About Gwendolyn "Gwen" Howe**  
****WIP/Length**: Complete/1,808 words**  
Main Characters/Pairings**: Gwen Howe**  
Spoilers**: Dumbledore's Army and the Year of Darkness by thanfiction (Under my favorites!)  
**Summary**: Every DAYD character has a story to tell, even those only mentioned once.**  
A/N**: This was the first time I've done something like this. HUGE thanks to kate_lb for betaing this and making it flow easier. 

* * *

**1. She originally didn't want to go to Hogwarts.**

Her aunt Maggie taught all of the children in Gwen's extended family. The fact that they lived on the other side of the country didn't matter much – Aunt Maggie had a mansion and it wouldn't have been difficult to stay during the week and Floo home every weekend. Her mother had loved Hogwarts, though, and had promised Gwen that if she didn't like it, she could be homeschooled the following year.

**2. She made her decision to stay when the Chamber of Secrets was opened.**

There was just too much adventure at Hogwarts to pass up. If some forgotten legend could come to life, what else was Hogwarts hiding? Of course the danger terrified her, but fear could be pushed aside. She was too curious to leave. She never regretted it and loved the adrenaline rush as something new happened every year.

**3. She enjoyed having to wear a tie.**

It was something different, and having to wear one every day never bothered her. After she bought her uniform, her father spent nearly two hours teaching her how to put it on correctly. By the time she started Hogwarts, Gwen could knot the tie perfectly in about twenty seconds. Her roommates were grateful on the first morning of classes when she offered to help them with their own.

**4. She hated her birthday.**

It was September 5th, four days after the start of school. She found it completely unfair that she was almost twelve when she started her first year. If she had been homeschooled she could have started the four days before her birthday and been with her cousin, Fran. It also meant Gwen was the last of her family to go to school and couldn't celebrate her birthday with them.

**5. She enjoyed flying and Quidditch but couldn't play the game.**

She could perform the basics of flying well enough, but wasn't able to do the stunts that Quidditch players were expected to do. She also didn't have the reflexes to catch a Quaffle or dodge a Bludger, let alone catch a Snitch. She didn't bother trying out when Harry Potter became Captain like the rest of her House did, although she would have enjoyed being on the same team as him.

**6. She loved to read.**

Gwen liked anything she could get her hands on, even if it was for History of Magic. There was always some little tidbit that was interesting. Her favorites were of wizards finding their way into troublesome adventures and having to fight their way out. She rarely admitted it, but while she wasn't too fond of the stories where the hero died in an intense battle, she didn't mind reading them, since not every hero is going to live. By November of 1997 she had stopped reading those and only read the tales where everyone survived. It was easier to handle life that way.

**7. She didn't exactly know what she wanted to do after school.**

She knew she wanted to travel and do something interesting, but hadn't set her mind on a specific occupation. All she knew was that after watching the First Task, she wouldn't be able to handle dragons. She thought she might go to different Wizarding communities around the world and learn of their legends and before investigating how many of them were true.

**8. Her family went on vacation almost every summer.**

She loved going to different countries, which was why she wanted a job where she could travel. She enjoyed everything from the different languages to the culture to the superstitions that were prevalent in every town. Her family stopped going after Fudge admitted Voldemort was back, so when Neville had everyone come up with spells in other languages, Gwen felt a trill of excitement run through her. Learning them more than made up for the lack of vacation.

**9. She wanted to have at least three children.**

Despite all of her cousins, at the end of the day she was still an only child. While Gwen knew her children would have an amazing extended family, she didn't want them to be alone. She decided that they would be born a few years apart out so that they weren't all in diapers at the same time. She also didn't want any more than five. Going to school with only _some_ of the Weasleys dissuaded her from that.

**10. Potions was her first favorite class.**

She only heard a smattering of whispers before her first Potions class, but it was apparent that Professor Snape _DID NOT_ like Gryffindors by the end of it. After writing to her mother and crying herself to sleep every night after the class for two weeks, Gwen decided to follow her parents' advice. She took a deep breath before walking in the dungeons, stopped taking the abuse personally, and worked as hard as she could to ignore the professor's sneer. It wasn't much different than ignoring her oldest cousin's nagging when she was younger. She found that following instructions wasn't too difficult when she did this, and the theories behind the concoctions were helpful. Her potions came out almost exact most of the time, and her essays were never filled with irrelevant information. She didn't always receive high marks, but at the end of each year, she felt like she learned something.

**11. Arithmancy was her second favorite class.**

It was the only other elective besides Care of Magical Creatures that sounded interesting. It was as precise as Potions was, and easy to understand. She and Salome Capper had fun calculating other students' character and personality numbers only to find that they matched their traits perfectly. Gwen thought that knowing the different methods to analyze the qualities would help her know if someone was apt to lie about their legends in the future.

**12. She had her first boyfriend was when she was three-years-old.**

All she ever did was kiss him on the cheek, but Gwen always had a weak heart when it came to the opposite sex. She had quite a few childhood boyfriends, one of whom gave her a quick kiss on the lips, but nothing was substantial until Hogwarts. There she kissed three different wizards, had one actual boyfriend, and realized that ex-girlfriends only became worse as they got older.

**13. She had crushes on a lot of boys but only **_**really liked**_** a few.**

At first she thought that having a huge crush on someone meant she was completely in love with them. After all, she "loved" Cedric Diggory and Harry Potter because of their Quidditch skills. And then, there had been the Jack Sloper incident. After him she started going after wizards with lighter hair and eye colors, like Colin Creevey (although she _knew_ that was only a crush because until their sixth year he seemed too "sparkly," and by the time she understood differently, she was over him). There was also Chris Williams—the Ravenclaw colors made his blonde hair and blue eyes irresistible. Chris was the only one she truly liked, and when he asked her to Hogsmeade their sixth year, Gwen couldn't stop smiling, even with Alecto Carrow breathing down her neck in class.

**14. She believed Harry after her third year, even though her family didn't.**

Gwen's aunt especially put a lot of stock in _The Daily Prophet_, and if the Ministry said Potter was a nutter then it was true. But Gwen saw the terror and pain when he appeared in front of everyone the night Cedric died, and knew the tears on his face were true. A boy who went through as much as Harry did had no reason to lie about something as extreme as Voldemort being back.

**15. She wished she was in the first DA.**

She had been oblivious to what the older students were doing at the time, and she hadn't yet started to crush on Colin. She found out about the DA after Marietta Edgecombe betrayed them, which made her angry. Gwen thought she would have made a better DA member because she would have never turned her back on her friends. She also would have liked learning real defensive spells. She learned nothing from Umbridge, which made it more difficult the following year when Snape took over. It was probably for the best, though – her father worked at the Ministry and Umbridge may have found a way to demote, or even fire, him.

**16. She liked to write.**

Sometimes she wrote stories, but she didn't think they were as good as the books she read. She always included too much detail that took away from the plot. This attention to detail helped in school essays though, as she couldn't help including all the relevant information she could find. She also kept a journal, but only began to write in it daily when she joined the DA and they started to rebel. It was hidden in her trunk with spells surrounding it so that the Carrows couldn't read it. If she survived, she was planning on getting Neville's permission to publish it. After all, there was nothing like reading an adventure story where the heroes were real kids.

**17. When Zacharias Smith left, a part of her wanted to follow.**

It would have been so easy just to walk out and never look back, but the betrayal of one of their own floored her. She would never be able to do that to her friends, or to forgive herself if she did. The training became harder and when the fear was too much, she recalled Neville and Ernie's backs after the whipping and Colin's face when Zach left, and she knew she could never let the DA down.

**18. She hated herself when she broke up with Chris.**

She knew Ginny Weasley cried herself to sleep nearly every night. She saw the fear on Hannah Abbott's face whenever Neville did something dangerous. She had a gnawing fear as Susan Bones' pregnancy became more pronounced. Gwen understood the terror of not knowing if the person you cared for would make it through an assignment or even the final battle. She didn't want to break up with Chris, but she thought the pain would lessen if she did. Before they went to their assignments during the final battle, he kissed her hard, either for a better ending than she gave them or a new start in their relationship if they both lived.

**19. She sent her journal to Fran when the seventh years disappeared.**

Ginny helped her smuggle it out of the castle. Fran knew how to deactivate the spells around it, and sent a cryptic letter the next morning that allowed Gwen to know she received it. Gwen didn't care anymore if it was published, only that her family knew what the year was like and that they knew how much she loved them. She did give instructions that if she died and Fran _were_ to publish it for any reason, she had to get consent from all living DA members before doing so. Instead, Fran kept it as a reminder of her cousin, and never once told her own children that they were too young to do or know something.

**20. Her last thought was of her mother.**

She felt the castle shudder under her when Ravenclaw Tower collapsed. She lost her balance as she stared in horror. A Death Eater used it to his advantage and he shouted out the curse that would kill her. As it travelled towards her, Gwen thought that if her mother had listened to her six years ago, she would be sleeping in her own bed, or maybe just crawling into it after working on some last-minute homework. Instead, she was fighting for the lives of her friends and the rest of the Wizarding world, and she thanked her mother for making her come to Hogwarts as the curse hit.


End file.
